


three's a crowd

by silentwalrus, teacuptaako



Series: grapefruit cinematic universe [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: 2012 era prank war fanfic but it's a proxy for attatchment issues, Community Overalls, Gen, Making friends as an adult is hard, Social Media, enemies to media firestorm sensation (MYSTERY WOMAN?), established relationships - Freeform, the tags are awful bc if you weren't directly sent a link to this you shouldn't read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27506275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacuptaako/pseuds/teacuptaako
Summary: “We suspect your credit card has been stolen and that you’re a victim of fraud,” an apologetic woman explains, “we just got a ‘Rodentia Taxidermy’ charge from ‘Rush Valley Post-animus Pet And Hunted Animal Prop Decoration Services (Vegan Options),’ totalling at—““That was me,” Winry says. She doesn’t want to hear the total aloud for a second time.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell, Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, Roy Mustang & Winry Rockbell
Series: grapefruit cinematic universe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956874
Comments: 17
Kudos: 150





	three's a crowd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tinfigs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinfigs/gifts).



> HAPPY MEAT FESTIVAL TO FEEF!!!!!!!!! mealwormy. mealwormy. here is some blendered nonsense for Your Enjoyment. talking over the last year has been so meaningful to me so here is an absolutely meaningless word Slop for us to hover down together with smiles on our faces.
> 
> cheers and props to walrus, without whom this DEFINITELY would not exist, and who has allowed their playground to also be my playground :) i like it here.

A month after Winry banned him from her household forever, Roy Mustang sends her an edible arrangement.

It’s tragically gorgeous: a beautiful spiky thing, fresher than the basil chilling on her windowsill, boasting long spears of pineapple and skewers of blueberries and strawberries, the vivid colours mixing and matching, topped off with bursts of kiwi, carved into hearts. Coloured fruits Winry’s never seen before gleam and menace off every available centimetre: dragonfruit, cut into stars, cubes of cantaloupe and guava, gorgeous in both simplicity and artistry. But the pièce de résistance is undoubtedly the grapefruit-- unsliced, whole, near-virginal, marred only by the frowny face shaved into the rind.

A handwritten card is attached to the side-- “ _To the lovely Ms. Rockbell, in the hopes that the wrong foot we got off to may yet stride into a glorious future _.”__

“Nice of him,” Granny says, as Winry tries to stuff the whole spiny mess into the garbage under the sink. Winry kicks the trash slightly to try and jog the leftovers into lying more flat so that the stupid bamboo spikes actually fit into the bag, pointedly ignoring Granny, who continues, “is this the same man who--?”

“Yeah,” Winry hisses, because probably, and the trash bag rips open and spills chicken guts, compost, fresh fruit, and nebulous juice down the back of the cabinet and onto the floor. The grapefruit rolls into her lap, a decapitated head, the wobbly shaved lip of it managing despite all odds to express a wide variety of complex emotions. There was cellophane wrapped over the whole mess before Winry had torn it off and hurled it across the room with the frustrating discovery that the lychees were just as delicious as they’d looked. “I’m going to have to think about this,” Winry says, punting away the grapefruit and continuing to shovel starfruit into her mouth at top speeds. “Goddamn it. Heck.”

“I wish him luck,” Granny says, peacefully, and leaves Winry lying on her back surrounded by trash. And plotting.

The problem is that the whole thing is such a clear trap that finding the specific trigger is difficult. Winry scours the basket more closely, snacking as she goes, pulling the trash from under the sink and tossing empty skewers, fruit rind, and spitting seeds in its general direction. She goes as far as to turn the wicker basket upside down for hidden messages and hold the cellophane up to the ceiling lights, squinting first with one eye shut and then the other.

After about ten minutes of this stupidity, Winry dumps everything back into the garbage and throws it out of sight, leaving it to hang heavy on her mind instead as she welds an ankle-plate to the connecting slats of the automail she’s building in Granny’s backyard. Ed’s weird maladjusted power-boyfriend gets her curiosity and bemusement, but he doesn’t get more time than this prototype’s trying to leech away from her.

It’s been two weeks ever since the sixty-ninth birthday party: that gives Mr. Mustang just enough time to get back to Central and, if he mailed it immediately, to send a parcel that would arrive at the Rockbell home when it did. At first Winry wonders if it was actually meant for Granny, as he would have no clue that Winry would stick around afterwards instead of heading straight back to Rush Valley, and then she remembers telling her plans within his earshot: after yanking Ed by the collar as he rambled back up to the back porch with a song in his heart and the communal overalls unzipped, Mr. Mustang behind him, pupils wider than a raccoon's but attention on Ed, on where Ed’s hand grabbed Winry back, all three of them shouting _and what the fuck was that?_ in harmony.

But is that worth a fruit basket? Or, no— an edible arrangement.

And that goddamn grapefruit.

A shower of sparks flurry across the grass as Winry shuts off the blowtorch with an irritated slam, suspicions and feelings crashing inside her and validating themselves as they mix. She stomps back inside, peeling off the heavy gloves and tossing them into a pile by the door, setting laser eyes on the _69! NICE!_ balloon arch in the living room entrance that’s hung onto just barely enough helium to still be recognizable as a parabola.

It takes some arranging, some effort, three adjustments of the automatic camera, using a small wad of gum to keep the grapefruit’s frown in place, and thank god Granny doesn’t come downstairs when she’s deciding on the best pose, but eventually Winry has a photo she’s pleased with— a close up of the sixty-nine balloons, her face in the nine, the grapefruit’s ‘face’ in the six, Winry tossing a wink to the camera. She prints a couple copies of the picture out and rummages through her desk in the barn to find her tackiest and most terrible Resembool postcard.

_Mr. Mustang!_

_So lovely to have you to our home. I only wish we could’ve spoken for longer. The accommodations will hopefully be more up to your standard next time you stay, as I currently cannot imagine what slight it was that drove you to the neighbours yard rather than our own. Those kinds of small unpleasantries can build and build until finding the source is like searching for a condom in a haystack._ _  
_ _  
_ _Mwah_ ,  
_Winry Rockbell  
_ xoxo

_(The fruit was lovely. Who is your supplier?)_

Winry squints at the result. Her handwriting has to get pretty cramped near the bottom to fit it all in and it’s hard to read, but not even she really knows what the hell she’s saying. “WHO IS YOUR SUPPLIER” looks less desperate written down than it had felt when was grinding it out, so that’s a benefit too. She staples the pictures right over the two eyes of the grapefruit, exes, like they’re marked for death, slaps on a couple of ugly stamps, and once they’re mailed ( _Glad that’s done with_ , Winry thinks) promptly forgets about the whole thing.

Being back at Granny’s means being under someone else’s authority again, a condition of existence that it took Winry a mere twenty minutes' reprise to remember hating. She’s been trying to filch time for herself to work on the leg in the barn, an essential prototype for a larger reconfiguration she’s attempting that could be the breakthrough she needs for this project, but she keeps getting interrupted by doing laundry, cooking meals, setting mice traps ( _“I know they’re native, Granny, but they’re not native to your pantry!”_ ) and troubleshooting the CO2 detector that keeps going off randomly and apparently has been for months.

When she finally judges the house Granny-safe and decides to go back home, it’s a week later and she’s got about two days of work in on the prototype. Her fingers itch for it as she waits for the train, but she wouldn’t have enough time to get anything done before having to pack up for the ride.

The moment of spare time brings the bizarre fruit-base overture to the front of her mind again. Winry spares a second to text Ed and see if the mess is his fault somehow. There’s always at least a 25% chance.

to: calcium deficient  
_what did you tell ur bf that you told me?? EMERGENCY. AM DYING.  
_

Whatever bleak mood she works herself into over the train ride is alleviated immediately when Paninya meets her on the step of their house with a quick kiss and a mug of coffee that Winry immediately steals when Paninya bends to take Winry’s bags.

“The old bat?”

“Oh jeez, she’s fine. I don’t like her all alone but—“

“The birthday?”

Winry groans into the coffee, blowing little bubbles in it and closing her eyes instead of answering. She’s so tired she can barely think— she’d took the leg as a carry on and messed with the sockets all night. “Birthdays are cancelled. Oh, that’s— speaking of, did we cancel the _Greasehead_ subscription? I think I’ve narrowed down my issue to this new screw I’m trying to make, the plates are fine. Nins, the grease guy said something about friction reduction in—“

“This thing came for you yesterday.”

Winry finally looks up from the coffee, and goggles at the four-metre tall plush squirrel in the hallway.

It’s so fat that it touches both sides of the wall, so tall that its ears are pushed into little T shapes against the roof. The plastic beads forming the eyes look distinctly malicious. Paninya puts down the bags she’s holding and crosses her arms. “You should’ve seen the mail people trying to get it up the cliffs.” Her voice is unusually flat, pressed down, the tone impossible to read. “There was a letter, too.”

The coffee in Winry’s stomach lumps into brick and starts gnawing itself into rubble. _To think the government of my country has so much time to spend on me personally…_ “Have you been able to get past it? How— how did you get it past the—?” Winry starts laughing, the worried hysterical laugh she doesn’t like from herself, as the squirrel stares her down with its massive glassy eyes. The reflection of Paninya passing her the letter looks all warped and long through the ludicrous fish-eye lenses, but at least Paninya’s reluctantly smiling back.

“Had to pull the heavy artillery. Ya'know, those asshole kids down the road. Here.” Paninya presses an envelope into Winry’s hand before looking at the bags, up at the squirrel that’s currently guarding their storage closet, and rolls up her jumpsuit sleeves with the grim resignation of a woman launching a hopeless military venture. The envelope’s already been opened and the letter clearly read, folded against the natural bend of the paper, but Winry knows her partner and would never have expected her to resist a letter sent from ‘ _Roy Mustang: Minister of War, State of Amestris (Long Live Her Glory_ )’?

It begins:

_Lady Rockbell, lovelier than previously stated,_

“I’m going to murder him,” says Winry, punching the squirrel’s ludicrously soft velveteen car-sized torso four times in quick succession, careful to not hit Paninya as she starts to wiggle horizontally through the ocean of fluff. She stomps into the kitchen as the squirrel rustles dangerously behind her, its massive fluffy body rocking like a cradle in a tornado as Paninya’s grasping hands start to pull Winry’s bags through in her wake, “Ninya, we don’t talk regularly, he isn’t calling me up being like— AARGH!” The thought is too awful to continue.

Blah blah blah the unbelievable nerve of this jerk, _lovelier than previously stated,_

_Please think not that your hospitality was lacking, as my early departure from your abode was externally motivated and the sin of which paid in blood for one hundred times over. As apology for this slight: a gift so that I may yet, in spirit, remain,_

_Your faithful servant and gracious guest,  
_ _Roy Mustang  
_ _xoxo_

_(requests and inquires to be directed to the MOW Offices; P.O. 458, Central)_

Winry slowly lowers the letter to her sides, in a state of shock. Slowly she turns, drifting back to the impenetrable rodent obstruction, cupping her hands to her mouth, and howls, “I PROMISE I’M NOT HAVING AN AFFAIR!”

The squirrel quakes, ominously, as the last bag vanishes into its depths with one final tug from Paninya. Winry’s heart goes out when she hears a muffled sob from somewhere around the tail area. She sizes up the situation, trying to gauge the best place to make an approach: the natural defenses of the squirrel truly overwhelm, but there’s a small tunnel afforded by the odd squishing of one of the trunk-like arms against the wall and Paninya’s previous voyage, which looks like the most feasible entry point.

Winry wades grimly into the battlefield, past the fluff and the endless reams of cuddly stuffing— bracing a hand on the wall, which is, she notices, scuffed and battered from where Paninya dragged the suitcase along it. “I honestly don’t know what this looks like, but it isn’t that,” Winry tries, but she’s so smushed against the wall that squirrel just gets in her mouth. Pinned like a butterfly on a pegboard, she spits out fur, and repeats, “IT ISN’T AN AFFAIR! IT’S JUST STUPID!” Winry gets a grip on the side of the thing and uses it to haul herself forward. When readjusting, the left arm whips back and clocks her across the face so hard that her brain rattles in its skull. “You mean so much to me— I would n— I WOULD NEVER—“ She hacks, coughs, spits out stuffing.

Thinking back to the way Al would pick up Ed and slam dunk him into the vegetable patch when they fought in Granny’s front lawn, Winry grabs hold of the squirrel’s paunchy cheek, sets her foot on the part of the hallway that’s been killed by the enemy already, and sends herself somersaulting forward.

When she finally emerges, victorious, ponytail half destroyed and shirt pulled all the up way to her collarbones, it’s to find Paninya cross-legged on top of Winry’s bags in front of the door to the laundry room with her entire fist shoved up her mouth to muffle laughter. Winry feels her eyebrows creasing in dismay and manages to wheeze out another handful of loose fake-fur.

This breaks Paninya— sends her rolling and scream laughing along the baseboards, howling and slapping weakly back as Winry starts to angrily tickle her.

“Goddamn that boy,” Paninya gets out, finally, a broken rasp, “destroying my house, stealing my wife— none of that was in his election platform.”

Winry groans and sinks down the wall to her knees and puts her face down. If you can’t see the world, the world can’t throw top-shelf nonsense at you.

“ _Lovelier than previously stated_ ,” Paninya coos, “oooh, baby, it’s getting me hot— just imaging his squishy circle face whispering in your ear—“

“I’m throwing up. I’m throwing up right now.” The distinctive sweaty calmness of Paninya’s hands envelop Winry’s own, tugging away the comforting view of sleeve in favour of an admittedly better one of bright-eyed Paninya, biting her lip, happy and glowing.

“My letters didn’t make you want to throw up. Take notes, Mustang. It’s all about being straightforward and simple.”

“Hey sexy, my leg broke again? I remember.” Winry drags herself up using Paninya’s head and sets her shoulders stern in the direction of the squirrel. It might actually be harder to get through from this side because of the tail sticking out a meter and a half from the main body, so fluffy and crackling with so much static electricity that they could generate power for all of Rush Valley with it.

“Hey sexy, I miss you, my leg broke again,” Paninya corrects, and Winry can do nothing against that but press her laughter into Paninya’s smiling lips.

After they lose two rounds against the tail, try open the storage room window, find it stuck with dried over paint, chisel it back to functionality with a wrench Winry had in her pocket, try to shove the bags out of the window, give the bags up as casualties of war, have Paninya crawl out and then drag Winry out too, pick the front door lock because both of them left their keys inside, and put the kettle on to boil, Winry feels like she’s thought of an appropriate response.

She sits down with a pad of her cheapest stationary and her most leaky pen.

 _Roy Mustang  
_ _The Esteemed Minister Of War (Up for Debate in next Election Cycle)  
_ _MOW Offices, P.O. 458  
Central Command _

_I believe this important governmental artifact was mistakenly sent to my home. As a concerned citizen thinking only of tax dollars and appropriate_

“Ninya, how do you spell allocation?”

“One elle, two oh’s.”

Blah blah making fun of him and _appropriate aloocateon of state resources, I am returning it to sender with the hopes that it find pleasure in the fulfillment of its intended use. I would like to additionally request to this magnificent office that whichever low-level staffer made this mistake not be punished, but merely gently educated._

 _Kisses and hugs and more kisses,  
_ _the radiantly lovely Winry Rockbell  
_ _xoxo_

“Your laughter is so evil and upsetting,” Paninya says lovingly, as Winry boots up the smaller of their household chainsaws and helps secure the safety goggles over Paninya’s eyes. “Radiantly lovely whom, all I know is Winry ‘nightmare goblin,’ Rockbell.”

“Stand by with the vacuum, nightmare goblin LeCoulte. It’s about to get real.”

The operation takes four steps: marking the points of incision with an oversize fabric marker, hacking through the torso of the squirrel, sawing off the head with as many even cuts as possible, and then transporting the removed trophy to the bewildered local taxidermist. It takes about four times as long as is reasonable for each of those steps, and then the taxidermist doesn’t want to take her money. He has a whole speech about the integrity of the field and the definition of 'animal', and it’s only after proving that the creature was defeated in combat that he’s willing to proceed with the work.

Perhaps the worst moment of Winry’s entire life is the moment directly after her card declines. The taxidermist looks about half a second from vaulting over the counter and removing Winry’s trachea with his teeth, and Winry would’ve only fought at about half strength to fend him off, but the second swipe takes and crisis is averted. As Paninya’s taping birthday-pattered wrapping paper and slapping stamps onto the side of the taxidermied squirrel head, wobbling alarmingly on the flat-bed of their truck, Winry gets a call from her bank.

“Oh no.” Her finger hovers gingerly over decline, and then she screws her courage to the shrieking point. Holding the phone to her ear like it’s radioactive: “Rockbell speaking?”

“We suspect your credit card has been stolen and that you’re a victim of fraud,” an apologetic woman explains, “we just got a ‘Rodentia Taxidermy’ charge from ‘Rush Valley Post-animus Pet And Hunted Animal Prop Decoration Services (Vegan Options),’ totaling at—“

“That was me,” Winry says. She doesn’t want to hear the total aloud for a second time. She rolls up the window, guiltily, even though Paninya’s too far away to hear. As Winry waits for the nice woman just doing her job to finish the longest pointed pause in the world, she tracks her wife’s movements through the rear-view mirror. Some employees are helping her make the delicate transition from truck to mail carrier.

“I see.” A cough. “Then I’m sorry for this needless interruption.”

“But if you see anything like that, uh, a second time, then it definitely is fraud and you should flag it.”

“No shame, ma’am,” says the woman, and hangs up.

Winry only has a second to moan to herself in agony before her phone beeps in her hand again.

_calcium deficient_

_wtf lol u kno bastaard &I dont hue secrets <3   
wht I kno u kno he nos I kno u kno <3   
LMOAOOO CAN U IMGNE  
anyWay what. _

_flop era alchemist_

_u illiterate mess hahah ^^  
_ _??_

_calcium deficient_

_ure the bitch who called emer gang  
**emergenccy  
Ths fking thing _

_flop era alchemist_

_W/o even excuse of automail hand.. Sad.  
Anyway back to MY EMERGENCY _

_calcium deficient_

_Wait first  
Why pic of u 69ing  
On fridge? _

_flop era alchemist_

_AAARSRLSKDFJSD ??????  
IS IT????????? _

_calcium deficient_

_IM AKSING U!  
Plz say its not..  
Im shuderin gg..  
Bc u… respect him _

_flop era alchemist_

_Absolutely not lmao_

_calcium deficient_

_Lmaolmao good  
Bstard is like…  
Trex. When u move he sees.  
Ignore &play dead. He will leave u alone  
Or punch  
Until stops moving ?  
:)_

Winry startles as the car shakes. She glances up: it’s Paninya, slamming the drivers side door shut as she hauls herself in and starts to mess with the rearview mirror although it didn’t change since she got out of the car fifteen minutes ago.

“I might have done an oops.”

Paninya laughs as she takes the wheel, turning to check for traffic with the diligent care of someone who solves most of her problems with Cannon Leg. “Just now you’re thinking this?”

Winry giggles, the hysterical giggle again.

_calcium deficient_

_DONT IGNRE ME  
ANSWER 4 ROY CRIMES _

_flop era alchemist_

_Speaking. Of roy crimes,_

_calcium deficient_

_Fuck off with that  
I kno What ur doing Wont work!! _

_flop era alchemist_

_Emergency directly related to that night  
Need more info  
and u need to vent  
And  
Who else can u tell :) _

_calcium deficient_

_True  
Ok  
So _

_flop era alchemist_

_So O.O_

_calcium deficient_

_Wait lemme  
Txt 2 spee cH  
Okay so I TOLD HIM that it was pointless to press charges because it’s just Wild Jenkins like who’s going to seriously prosecute Wild goddamn Jenkins I mean seriously you want to lawyer up and send a guy with three teeth and four pigs to the slammer? A guy who’s pigs outnumber his teeth? But fucking Roy is like “all of us have equal teeth under the law” or what the fuck EVER and GOD okay Get This even after I was all “sure go and get your assault case thrown out in front of the entire town and humiliate me publicly so I can never go back to my mothers gravesite ever again” he drops the bomb that OH NO, ASSULT AND BATTERIES is not enough for our plucky little minister, he’s going full ATTEMPTED MURDER. Which. Hello???? The gun wasn’t even loaded Ed the gun was loaded, the fact that it was loaded with salt rounds and not flesh-piercing metal is a difference I believe the judge will find inconsequential. And why are you screaming in here? Im texting winry. Oh how could I have not intuited that Fuck Off I’m telling her about your elaborate and insane revenge quest against my childhood babysitter who lightly salted your pale little flat ass. Dear lord Edward. Ed is it still typing? Oh fuck I hope that didn’t  
Winry  
Winry  
Winry  
Winry _

Paninya says, “are you crying?”

The next couple of weeks are non-events, which is a relief in every way imaginable. Because it’s Roy’s turn to move, so having successfully tossed the hot potato, Winry can get back to her life— to adjusting the heights of legs for her still growing automail clients, checking in after growth spurts, and wrestling with schematics for contracted blacksmith-based projects, and generally gets on with running a small start-up where every second that you’re not working is a second you’re losing out on thousands of cenz of potential revenue. Winry had once tried to actually calculate the money she’d lost last year by taking two weeks to surf down the coast, but before she could finish the figures a crazed demon wrestled control of her mind and destroyed the paper.

Easily the best part of getting back to life is sinking her teeth back into her very own ongoing feud: the one she’s been waging for the last six months against, where she tries not to lose her mind in the direction of the manufacturing company she’s contracted part fabrication out to. Gone are the days of smithing late into the night, hammering the anvil so gleefully that Granny started to make noises about soundproofing the barn. With the more precise work she’s graduated into for her own constructions, Winry’s found herself relying more and more on custom and bespoke parts, ones she’s designed herself that non-alchemists can’t create in real-space with conventional tools.

Part of why she even picked this group is that they fill government contracts, and she gets a subsidy for the non-profit nature of a lot of her work. On paper they’re the perfect company.

But the assholes can’t get her goddamn screw right.

Winry’s standing in their all-white and chrome corporate lobby, the headquarters of the whole horrible operation, doing her best to will comfort into the cement cube provided for petitioning supplicants to wait upon while their every orifice tried to clench up in the freezing air conditioning and their ears were bombarded with the most offensive easy listening to ever hit the airwaves. To get through the irritation she’s focusing on the victories she had to win to get here— fighting her way up the chain of middle management until someone had actually sent her a time for a meeting.

One which was supposed to start twenty minutes ago.

A scrutinizing scowl peeks out from around a massive pile of texts, followed shortly by the rest of a beaky face. The secretary must be related to someone Winry’s spoken to recently, because the way she looks about to leap over the counter and bite is making Winry feel vaguely nostalgic. They’ve wait in a silent standoff for ten more minutes before Winry decides, _okay, I’m just going to hit the door with the bag of inferior screws I brought with me until it breaks down_ , right as the monolithic door to the inner sanctum slides open of its own accord and out strides Ed.

It’s weird to see him at work. Eyes cold and narrowed slightly, the disdain tangibly radiating off of him, manifesting in the cool sternness of his posture, the crisp fold of his hand into deep suit pockets. As much as they joke about the automail arm damaging Ed’s coordination (and ability to type) forever, the flesh still takes Winry by surprise. Ed, sleeves half rolled, revealing a watch tan, is none less scary than the feral little beast of the past— half fire, half love. Full metal.

But as much as the Minister of Energy stands in front of her, so does Disastrous Short Stack, Afflicted With Since Birth.

The suit is no doubt part of the problem with his picture, but the two men flanking him seem to have walked most of the problems in with themselves. Conflict hangs heavy in the air between the three of them. The one on the left, Pillsner, she’s met before: he’s the chief handler of her case and he looks just as annoyed to see her as Ed is delighted. The two of them lock their eyes on Winry in the same second, and she can almost hear a snap as the tension moves to include her, too.

“Who let you in here?” Ed asks, visibly lighting up as he teleports to her side. “Tax evaders aren’t allowed in public buildings, you know that.”

She shakes her baggie of rejected screws at him like the world’s most disappointing and high-budget maraca. “Same as you. Official business.” She bites back, _shutting this scrap heap down? No? What if I gave you 300 cenz?_ and extends a thin smile to Pillsner and his guy. “Sir. Here for our appointment.”

He doesn’t respond immediately. He seems a bit shellshocked, beats of men, two small little production line managers that were totally unprepared for whatever the hell just happened behind closed doors and wasted half an hour of Winry’s time.

“Ma’am,” the nameless grunt nods, “we’ll be back for our appointment right after Mister Elric has reconvened with his bodyguards. High ranking guy like him, we’ve got to ensure his safe departure from the building.”

He tries to return her smile. The muscles in his face don’t look confident in their results. Despite the classy atmosphere and “SYNERGY” poster on the wall, Winry is reminded strongly of the many bouncers that have held their arms out to stop her from getting wasted on 5 centz shots and told her to get lost and stay there.

 _I am with a public figure and the secretary is very clearly taking photos of Ed,_ Winry reminds herself, _I can’t just ask if the dummy’s got himself thrown out. He is. At WORK._

“What, now you’re throwing me out because you already know you fucking failed the safety inspection? Smart thinking, geniuses, getting me out to report back with this as soon as possible. If anything you should be trying to lock me _in_ the building.”

An emotion swells within Winry: nameless, containing a multitude of things too intertwined and codependent to peel apart, but all caps and searingly neon rainbow colored. The kind of thing that, if a doctor asked her if she’d ever done before, would change the trajectory of the rest of her checkup.

“Be that as it may.” Pillsner says. “Sir.”

Ed ignores him completely, turning with a spin and a flip of his braid to Winry instead. “Would your official business go faster if I stood nearby and growled?”

Winry is unable to keep from patting him on the cowlick and cooing. “You growl on command now?”

Pillsner clears his throat. Winry glances back at him; whatever they’ve messed up is bad enough that they really want Ed gone. With repeated failure to deliver product and the kind of problems that the Minister of Energy himself comes and inspects for, they’ll be closed down within the month. There’s nothing left to do but go home and dig a self-pity pit in the ground.

“Let’s bounce,” Ed says, reading her silence correctly. Then he stops, tilting his head up to the roof. “Wait— you’re the five o’clock? Five o’clock with this dude?” His chin jerks left to Pillsner. Winry nods, slow.

“And?”

“And Mustang told me to give this to the person after me, five o’clock. I said like hell am I going to run your messages but it turned up in my coat pocket anyways, so.”

Winry makes no move to hold her hand up for any kind of message. Nor does Ed move to hand her anything.

They stare each other down, the suspicion Winry feels reflected back at her. “He said, ‘here’s a physical object to give to the five o’clock appointment at Hardware Innovations Manufacturing Corp, make sure they get it?’ And you didn’t tell him—“

“I have heard that so much lately,” groans Ed, “ _wooh boo boo, what did you tell her_ , I swear if you start in on it too then I’ll pack myself in a crate and mail myself to Xing.”

“Promise?” Winry asks, reflexively, but her heart isn’t in it. “Give me the thing, I guess.”

Ed scowls and twitches, a movement aborted as he sees the secretary leaning halfway over her desk, snapping shots of them as Pillsner and lackey shuffle awkwardly backwards to be out of her frame. “Outside.”

They’re less obvious but still a little obvious huddled by a parking meter on the street. Ed whips out a heavy envelope with an honest to god wax seal on the back and Winry tears it open with her teeth while he laughs at her. If anyone’s watching it must look like a completely rabid drug deal, but it beats a nosy woman standing literally four meters away snapping shots.

The message, of course, is terrible, and not worth the trouble at all.

_Respectable Lady Rockbell,  
_ _The position afforded to me allows me to aloocate* certain grants and opportunities with reasonable purview of my office. It has been raised to me that your work developing ‘transforming’ automail limbs, specifically legs hinging above the knee, which do not require alchemy to swap between specific modes, could be of great interest to the Amestris military._  


__Even if you are not interested in working with any of the resources my office could dispose to you, there is a lose and informal gathering of similar developers to yourself meeting in a week’s time at the Fleischfest Ballhouse nine o’clock pm on this coming Sunday.  
_ _If you are interested in attendance, simply present the seal that was affixed to the exterior of this envelope to the security department outside the Fleischfest. It should be an enjoyable night, full of good company and bright opportunity.__

_I remain your faithful servant,_  
_Roy Mustang_  
xoxo

_(requests and inquiries regretfully closed)_

_*I found myself quite charmed by your regional spellings. Did you and Ed have the same grammar teacher?_

“Oh, no, it’s everything I need right now.”

“Oh no?” Ed says, giving up on respectful lurking and grabbing for the paper.

“Because _I can’t go_ ,” Winry wails, shaking it in Ed’s face. His eyes cross as he reads it.

“I’ll drag you there kicking and screaming myself. You know where Roy put that squirrel head? On the bedroom wall. Suffer. Suffer and die.”

“I BIT THE SEAL HE’S TALKING ABOUT!”

“What?”

Winry presents the mangled envelope.

Ed says, “You bite on command now?”

They fight for a bit and then Winry pretends to cry but then actually cries, and Ed suggests that he can just let Winry in through the staff entrance because he’ll be there anyway, and Winry demands to know why he didn’t say that was an option from the start, and then Ed says that it seemed kind of obvious and then they fight some more and get ice cream on the way home.

“How’d he know about my appointment?” Winry asks, later, as it comes back to her. “You really didn’t tell him?”

“I told you, he’s like a t-rex. When you move he sees. It’s the worst.”

“You really like him, don’t you?”

Ed looks deeply startled. “I wouldn’t go that far.” He then immediately turns pink and goes back to his double whip mocha unicorn whatever thing, and Winry nods.

They pull up to the crossing point; where Winry gets on a bus back up to the cliffs and Ed continues down the gully to the train stop.

“The toothmark isn’t such a big deal. Don’t worry about the staff entrance. The seal is still legible so— I’ll just see you there. What kind of thing do you usually wear to this?”

It occurs to her, only after being stared at open-mouthed by the bouncers, and the people waiting in line outside the Fleischfest, and the bar staff, and the wait staff also, that asking Ed Elric about what the appropriate style to wear to an event was the most rookie possible move. _Casual_ he said. _’S what the invitations said. And I’m sure as hell not dressing up._

Except, Ed and Mr. Mustang left from the same house. Maybe Ed started in his pyjamas, but several layers of protection existed between him and the wide wide world: Winry is sure that he was stuffed into that blazer before he even left the bedroom, let alone the house.

There were no such protections between Winry and the world.

She snaps the denim strap of the Rockbell family overalls against her right tit and thinks _well, what would I do about it now._ She’s so mortified that it comes all the way back around to a serenity: the knowledge that she has messed up so badly that there is no way to go but up from here.

After meeting her at the door, apparently worried that Winry’s bite had been so powerful that the seal would not actually be identifiable at the door, Ed sprints off to talk to all the alchemy trade people that are studiously avoiding Winry. Without him she’s an unmoored island, left with nothing to do but drift awkwardly from the snack table to the bar and back again, pretending she isn’t in the homicide mindset and attempting to project even a degree of competence. She brought business cards with her, but pulling them out of a titty pocket made out of denim isn’t a great step one when making a good first impression amongst the elite business world. Some of these women are dressed in priceless ballgowns, and Winry’s wearing overalls who’s buttpatch required a second patch.

What keeps her moving, casual, and at least an eighth relaxed, is the knowledge that when Mr. Mustang sees her he’ll instantly drop dead. It’s just a matter of finding him, inflicting herself upon him for a few brief moments while he stares at her outfit, and then going back to the self-pity pit at home.

It’s a devastatingly beautiful ballroom. There are chandeliers, even, and rotating waiters who glide from one cluster of gathered beautiful people to the next, transporting little peppers with sauce, fizzing cups of champagne, sliced pears drizzled with honey and cheese, and other appetizers across the divides of sweeping stone ballroom. On one end is a photo-op zone: a pouf sits in front of a bank of cameras and a barricade, behind which ravens the press gang. One at a time, people from the more stern and important looking groups of attendees are led to the press area, interviewed, and then gently reintroduced to the natural ecosystem. It’s possible Mustang’s definition of casual is different from hers, but much more likely that this was a setup from the start.

And suddenly— she’s furious. Certainly there was a better way to go about whatever this was supposed to be. Without backing down on what she did herself to get here (and oh boy, is it a lot), it’s impossible to discount that she was also led; strung along by her friend’s weird and bizarrely possessive, but at the same time, completely hands off, significant other. Whatever the last month was, be it a test, or an ambiguous overture, or some sort of 4D chess battle against the idea that Ed might spend time with other people, its taken its time playing out. And now here Winry is, armed for the final showdown against the holder of one of the highest offices in her country with not but the community overalls and a spring in her step.

The spring in her step does come into surprising usefulness: Winry, on the hunt for her prey, takes five laps of the ballroom before realizing that Mustang has been quarantined in the press gallery. She recognizes him by the fuzzy black mop on his head and the lazy curl of his shoulders, in and down, the posture that Ed complains about so often.

And, as she marches past the panicked security members trying to stop her, she finds that she doesn’t mind that in Mustang so much, that it fits; that the flicking of his hand over the stool’s velvet seam, hidden from the cameras and not from her, suits the scrawl of the letters she’s received.

When she’s standing right behind him, when the press knows she’s there and Mustang is only starting to suspect, what she wants to say coalesces in her brain like a lightning bolt from the blue.

Winry sinks her nails into Mustang’s shoulder, leaning down over his left so their cheeks are together, her grip forcing wrinkles into his immaculate dinner wardrobe, and smiles into the camera. Mustang is still under her, pliant but for his head, tilting up to meet hers with an even and implacable expression that manages to suggest pleasantness without ever committing to it.

The snap of cameras go off even more and even faster, the press starting to yell questions all over each other in a cavalcade of cover for mysterious whispers, the flash of bulbs bright and bursting behind Winry’s eyes.

“Listen,” she whispers, “for a moment here, Mr. Mustang. Whatever you’re hoping to get from me— it’s—“

And Mustang turns even further so he’s sideways on his fancy puff of a chair instead of straight on, using the back of his head to cover Winry’s lips from the watching people. “Ms. Rockbell,” he starts, and Winry puts her finger to his lips.

The room goes the opposite of quiet. Winry’s heart goes the opposite of still. But her hand and her voice both stay steady as she continues, soft, “you wanted everyone watching, right? Well here they are. And whatever this thing is, whatever you’re proving, it’s been unsatisfactory so far. You’re showing me you’re funny? I know that. That’s not the problem. You’re telling me you know where I live? I invited you there. You want to prove that Ed likes you? He tells me every day. ”

A snatch of audio whips to the front of the room, an excited journalist ravening for the headline. “AND YOU KNOW EACH OTHER QUITE WELL? IS IT AN ELRIC CONNECTION?”

Low, Mustang murmurs, “you’ve got it all thought out, it seems,” but his composure— slips, for a moment. Winry’s turn to shield him, moving her hand from his shoulder to briskly sharpen his collar. She knows what he wants now; it’s hilarious how he’s gone about it.

“We can’t be friends, Roy,” she says, softer still. “It would be fun, but we can’t. Ed might be able to forget it, but I still remember you, in your sharp blue uniform, coming into my kitchen and taking away my two most important people. You’re welcome in my house whenever you’re in town, and you’re definitely welcome to keep funding my stupid screw fund. I like that Ed likes you. I think you do your best in a lot of hard situations. But I didn’t vote you into any of those situations and you—” how does she say this. “You think too much. And— you never told me where you got the fruit.”

“Hmm,” Roy says. He’s smiling.

“Yeah.” Winry says. Of course he’s goddamn smiling.

He pulls his head back and Winry lets go, stepping to his side and pushing her bangs out of her face so as to have something to do with her hands that isn’t possessively smooshing the Minister of War’s circular face into little fishy lips. Good boy, she thinks, and then strangles the part of herself that thought it, desperately fighting against the fire rising up her face. This is why Paninya doesn’t let her outside.

Looking back at the crowd Winry sees the press gallery, whipped into the fevered hum of a mass of people already infighting about whose name gets to be on tomorrows headline. The cameras are still going off, capturing every moment under the searing public eye, and Winry grins for them.

A natural continuation of the conversation, loud enough for the reporters to hear, Roy tilts his head into the grip of his hand, and says, “Shared custody, then.”

Winry blinks. A distinctive howl rises from the crowd of reporters, all of them shifting and jostling as one, until from the front bursts Ed, holding a tray of cocktail shrimps over his head as he bodychecks people out of the way. Protecting it like a child.

“Oh no,” she says, “You can have him.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope u read the other two in the series first ! did i mention that at the top oh well too late now,


End file.
